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Thursday, April 9, 2009

A Narrow Escape

JoeWe just now had our first visitation from the witches, and it was a close call, let me tell you. My impression was that they were not supposed to come by until Saturday, and not wanting to have a house full of candy when it wasn't necessary I had not, therefore, been stocking up. Nevertheless, I was downtown in one of the nicer grocery stores this afternoon, so I figured it was time to stock up. Not a moment too soon, as it turned out!

This particular coven had three members, complete with hats and the other bits of required accoutrement: a little bucket for collecting candy, and a teapot (apparently witches generally carry around their freshly brewed potions in teapots). I was so startled by it all, I think I may have forgotten some details, but here's basically how it went down: they said, "Glad Påsk!", I ran off and got the candy, I put a handful in their tiny bucket (pretty much doubling their meager haul), then the littlest one (who was holding the bucket) and I stared at each other expectantly for a minute. I'm not ashamed to say, I blinked first, and I hastily gave her a second handful of candy. This was not, apparently, what she was waiting for; after another moment she must have decided I wasn't going to do whatever she actually expected, so instead she turned to her taller companion and (somewhat imperiously) gestured to the teapot. After a moment's scramble, the larger witch managed to extract a small red piece of paper from the teapot, which she handed to me; this however, caused the smaller one to roll her eyes, and she took the card back, and turned it over so that the side that read, "Öpna Mig"(sic) was facing up, gave it back to me, and gestured expectantly for me to open it. At this point, witch number three, who had been somewhat anxiously scanning the hallway for other potential sources of candy, finally could wait no longer, and she dragged them all away.

So, catastrophe narrowly averted.

P.S. What did the card say? Click the image, and you can see for yourself…